2013 British GP: F1 Driver of the Day

Following a chaotic British Grand Prix in which F1 tyre suppliers Pirelli are a shoe in for Villain of the Day, it is time for The Checkered Flag to crown another Driver of the Day.

There were a number of options to choose from with drivers including Felipe Massa and Lewis Hamilton recovering from tyre failures to recover to points scoring positions. However, while these failures did send them to near enough the back of the grid, they had enough pace to pick off many of those in front of them – especially Hamilton in the Mercedes.

Another strong contender is the soon to be Porsche LMP1 driver Mark Webber, who perfectly utilised a late pit stop for fresh tyres to gain three places from where he exited the pits to finish second ahead of Fernando Alonso – another man who also used good pit stop strategy to go from eighth to third.

However, and not wanting to diminish Nico Rosberg’s commanding victory, none of the top five finishers are worthy of being named “F1 Driver of the Day.” The man who does the title is Force India’s Paul Di Resta, starting from last on the grid due to another team error – this time allowing the car to be underweight – the Scotsman cut through the grid showing that the Force India does have really pace with podiums surely on the cards if the qualifying woes could ever be resolved.

As already mentioned the villain of the day is probably Pirelli – whether the tyre woes were due to manufacturing defects or whether the FIAs quest for “more exciting tyres” meant that the current tyres were too weak for the high speed flowing circuits like Silverstone. However, if we must narrow it down to a driver then it will have to be Jenson Button – while he didn’t do anything wrong driving wise, he still had no handle on a car that doesn’t seem to be any better and is surely going to be discarded in order to focus on 2014.

Contrast that to Nico Hulkenberg in a Sauber that is arguably in the same state as the McLaren – he managed to gain a point and was less than two seconds away from Di Resta in ninth.

If you disagree with our choice then please leave a comment and let us know what you think – we are happy to debate!

I think your driver of the day is spot on for exactly the reasons you've given.... but Pirelli as villains of the day is just plain daft & unfair... the blame for this tyre debacle should lay firmly at the door of the FIA (whose stupid option tyre rules which forces teams to run an inferior short life dry weather compound for the sake of the show & then restricts them from testing the integrity of them) for creating a situation that I daresay any given tyre manufacturer would be encountering the same problems with.... let's just have one dry weather compound per race that is capable of lasting at least 2/3rds distance & also let's not allow the teams to influence the construction of them such as objecting to the use of Kevlar instead of steel banding, but most of all let's allow them to test the bloody things with current cars under current working conditions... let common sense prevail! :)

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